ruffly skirt

I was perusing one of the slightly weirder fabric stores, and found this ruffly fabric on sale. it caught my eye and I grabbed a meter and a half and decided what I would do with it later.

At home searching on the Internet and I found that the ruffly fabric is big! I fond a bunch of ideas, mostly for skirts, and went with this one from v & co blog. I didn't use the same fullness at the waist and hip that she did, as I was concerned that it would make me look huuuuuge.

My ruffle fabric seemed to be a bit see through so I lined it with some spare slinky knit I had.

Bird encounter

Since I've started blogging I've been carrying my camera with me. Although my blog is really about sewing etc, I like the idea of carrying the camera in the hope that it would make me more aware of things I'm looking at. And today it paid off!

As I parked at the pub to meet a friend, I noticed a Tui on a flax bush right in front of my car. It used to be really rare to see Tuis anywhere but some pretty intense bush regeneration has made them a lot more common.

And this is as close as I've ever been, but it's the season when the flax flowers are in bloom and the Tui's are gorging on the pollen.

I'm sad that the photos are a bit dark, but I'm pretty happy to have got some good photos.

What frustration looks like...

So I was merrily sewing away and was thinking my new blouse was looking pretty sweet. It's the JJ blouse.

I was serving the sleeve seam, and was almost all the way round, when I caught a fold of fabric. Yip and there it is, I've knifed a hole in my sleeve. Gutted. Many swear words were said and I've decided to stop sewing and watch DVDs instead.

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

Faux milk glass

Our house is a 1940's deco-ish house, although there aren't many deco features which is sad. One of the features is a fairly grungy tiled fire place with a simple wood surround. A medium term project for me is to make the fireplace over, and I decided to start with some nice decoration for the mantel.

I'd seen a couple of cool images on pinterest formula glass, which was the sort of look I was after. But a couple of things thwarted that plan, in that I don't have much of a budget for my make over and milk glass can be pricey, and it's really difficult to find milk glass in NZ as its really an American product.

Image from Pinterest (I tried to work out how to embed it but I'm a bit hopeless like that)

But then after more Pinterest cruising I found this tutorial for making faux milk glass! Genius!

So a trip to the store at the landfill where I found 8 pieces of glassware for $5, a can of glossy white spray paint, a quick stop at the local sallies store where I found a couple of extra pieces for a dollar each, some latex gloves, and I was away laughing.

I still have a few pieces left to do, but here's the result so far, I love it!